


the time before that and the other time after

by maggie



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Affection, Domestic, M/M, Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:48:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22724947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maggie/pseuds/maggie
Summary: It's not exactly a vacation; it's not exactly anything, other than a port in a temporary storm.
Relationships: Arthur/Eames (Inception), Eames/Yusuf (Inception)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 37
Collections: Eames' Stupid Cupid 2020





	the time before that and the other time after

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Amity_who](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amity_who/gifts).



> > Thank you as always to my partner-in-[tommyplum](https://tommyplum.tumblr.com), John, who performs proofreading duties with great cheer. Hope you enjoy it, Amity_who!

"Don't be bloody ridiculous, Eames," Yusuf says, as Arthur links his fingers with Eames's, already turning to step out of the door's threshold into the pounding midday sun. Eames smiles, lips parting to say something, but Yusuf shuts the door.

\---

_eighteen days before that_

"I wouldn't do this if there was any other way," Arthur said, and his mouth was tight at the corners, already flat eyes going flatter in the way that he did when he was hiding his distress. Arthur's eyes reminded Yusuf sometimes of an ancient nanny goat that his aunt Karima had, at her home in Arusha when he'd visited as a boy. She was a pretty goat, but she'd look at you with those strange flattened eyes and you'd wonder if she was thinking about her hooves meeting your chin.

Eames chose that moment to say, "It's enchanting how you talk about me as if I'm a potted plant. Should I go stand in a suitable decorative nook?" and Arthur buttoned his lips tighter, smoothing uncharacteristic rumples from his suit vest, embroidered with tiny fleur-de-lis. 

"I'm doing what's best for you," he told Eames, but looked at Yusuf. "We're going on a job and it'll be hard enough with Cobb forging in your place. We can't lose this contract. Or this client, for that matter, and once you're … yourself again, you'll agree with me."

"Can't imagine there's altogether much we agree on in any version of reality," Eames murmured, fixing his shirt-cuffs. Yusuf, always a potted plant, cleared his throat a little and said, "I don't mind, honestly. These things happen when you use compounds that haven't been rigorously tested. I've seen it before and I know what to do." He smiled at Eames, and that, at least, felt natural in this entire unnatural situation. "You're in good hands."

Arthur raised his eyebrows slightly, the way a faintly exasperated but mostly worried child-minder would at their recalcitrant charges, and Eames nodded, looking down for a moment before raising his head with a bright, cheerful, entirely artificial smile. "I never did have many sleepovers as a boy. We'll make up for lost time, eh?" and his hand clapped down on Yusuf's shoulder.

"A fortnight," Arthur said to Yusuf, and even as he was saying it his face shifted from concentrating on The Situation With Mr. Eames to The Inception Job At Hand. "Maybe a few days more, but under a month. We'll contact you as soon as we get back."

"Yes, of course," Yusuf said courteously, and heard himself make the banal rote addition, "--no rush, take your time."

Arthur gave a smile flatter than a nanny goat's eyes. "Time, Yusuf, is the one thing I never own enough of to take."

\---

_seven days once that happened_

"If you won't let me dream." Eames said, "at least take me out. I'm going mental cooped up in here all day, and it wouldn't even need to be anything special! It's all new to me! That's the good part of temporary Somnesia, mate -- everything old is new again."

Yusuf grimaced at the term that Eames had come up with for his dodgy-Somnacin-induced amnesia, although secretly he loved it, adored the puckishness of how Eames played around with everything -- words, clothes, food, names, bodies. "You _do_ dream," Yusuf pointed out pedantically, "you'd be in much worse shape right now if you couldn't dream under your own steam. But you can't go under, not until your condition clears."

"Yessss." Eames got off the settee, coming over to where Yusuf was sitting at the dining table in his glasses, going through notes on a test formulation of clomipramine with an adjusted active metabolite (terribly engaging stuff, Yusuf thought, at least if a person -- such as himself -- was smart enough to understand it, unlike whoever'd been employed to run the PASIV that had put Eames in this state). Eames folded his arms on the table, glancing over the notes before nudging himself, full-body, like an enormous dog, against Yusuf. "I know all that, and I accept it, and I am grateful for your conscientious nursemaiding. Now take me out and let's get a proper meal, and a few drinks, and think about something _other_ than sodding tricyclic compounds for a change."

"But I know so _much_ about tricyclic binding profiles!" Yusuf protested, even as he let Eames drag him up from his chair, chivvy him into the bedroom, choose out clothes and get him dressed and aim them out the door and down the street. 

"Yessss!" Eames said again, only this time with much more bounding cheer as he beamed and took in the busy streets, the colours of the clothes and the sky and the trees, the smell of hot pitch and motor exhaust gusted away periodically by salt breezes. "If you tell me that you spend most of your days in your musty little house with your manky little cat poring over lists of molecule chains instead of coming out here, Yusuf, I'll weep, I really will."

Yusuf stuffed his hands in his pockets and angled past a stray yellow dog lying panting happily on the sidewalk. "I do _work_ there," he pointed out, faintly miffed at this summation of the home he'd so generously shared with Eames the past few days. "My mother decorated it."

Eames made a face of contrition, although it was there and gone in the space of a pretty girl passing by riding a bike with a pretty boy behind her, both of them returning the smile that Eames sent along with them. "Past time then for you to get your own tastes in, don't you think?" Eames murmured, and nodded at the outdoor tables of a small restaurant. Fifteen minutes later they were washing down crispy fried packed potatoes and beef samosas with icy cold Tuskers, watching more attractive people go by, and Yusuf was starting to get a little self-conscious about the somewhat camphor-ball smell that clung to his clothes. 

"I do come out, you know," he said suddenly, and Eames looked at him, sweat making little droplets along his temples and marching down the straight bridge of his nose. "Eh?" Eames said, and Yusuf repeated louder, "--it's not as if I don't know my way around here, I'm _from_ here. Originally, I mean. It's not a novelty."

Eames squeezed the juice from a quarter of lemon into the bitten end of a samosa and nodded, nipping his fingertips around his tongue to lick off the tart juice. "All right, then, love," he said easily, and something in Yusuf uncoiled.

\---

_three days prior, though_

"I'm capable of cooking my own meals," Eames yawned, standing bare-footed in Yusuf's kitchen and stooping to fondle the cat behind the ears before it mrrped and strode on its way. "You're already putting me up and safeguarding my mental state, surely that counts as above and beyond."

"I was making food anyhow," Yusuf said, gesturing with his slotted spoon and dripping hot oil on the stove. "You'll like these -- there's chai in the pot, have some -- I loved them when I was a boy, we call them mitha bhajias, my sister would have to race to get her share before I ate them all." He peered into the bubbling cauldron of the iron pot, watching the little cardamom doughnut balls turn and jitter, before wondering why Eames had nothing to say about Yusuf's childhood greed and turning to look over his shoulder. "What, no comments about my--"

The joke slumped into a huff of confusion; Eames was shaking, shaking as if somebody had him by the shoulders and was jerking him back and forth, his eyes tightly shut, one hand clasping and unclasping against his thigh while the heel of the other pressed into the side of his head. Cursing under his breath, Yusuf dropped the spoon in the pot and went over to Eames, calling his name a few times until there was some spark of recognition, and only then did he reach out. Wrapping his hands around the man's thick shoulders, feeling the straps of his ribbed white vest damp beneath his palms as he guided Eames to a chair and sat him down. Eames went without protest, which was a relief, and Yusuf checked his eyes, his mouth, made him count fingers, and then Eames reached up and grabbed Yusuf's hand (three fingers, he hadn't had any trouble counting them, nothing neurological then thank God--) to clench in both his own.

"Freddy," he burbled, eyes greyer than blue, watery, his face shocked pale beneath the tan. "Freddy Simmonds, yes? That's who I am? That's my name." 

Yusuf blinked. He didn't, actually, know.

\---

_once, four years and two and a half months ago_

Yusuf had thought about what kissing Eames would be like, but it wasn't anything like this, and that was because Eames was kissing _him_. An entirely separate equation, because Yusuf then had the luxurious headspace come available like a mughal's suite that he was the desirable one, to this man, that he hadn't even needed to initiate with the humiliating possibility of being sweetly and firmly turned down. Yusuf wasn't lacking in self-esteem, he'd had lovers when he'd liked to, but Eames was something again altogether. An interloper who'd made himself comfortable, like the cat, like the pots and jars of condiments that sat on the kitchen table, like the things that you never thought about once they'd become a part of your life.

"You don't mind, do you?" Eames murmured, pressing a fat-mouthed little buss to the corner of Yusuf's chin and chuckling, "--I must say, darling, I'm accustomed to a _bit_ more of a fuss when I'm snogging somebody handsome," and Yusuf shook himself fully into what was happening.

"Oh," he said, and then laughed, setting his hands against Eames' hips and starting to rub and knead and massage the flesh there as Eames purred encouragingly and Yusuf continued, "oh, I was … I'm sorry, I'm being rude, you're right. I'll make up for it."

The chenille spread on his bed was nubby under the exposed parts of their skin, crushing soft into the dampness as their bodies warmed each other up, and Yusuf thought that it wasn't too often unexpected things happened to him. He lived an ordered, orderly life and he liked things comfortable, and that was why he'd begun dabbling in this line of work, just enough excitement in subverting big pharmaceutical companies without being important enough for them to bother with him. Eames hadn't figured into that life. Until he very suddenly _had_ , and now here they were, and Eames' voice was scrubby and urgent in Yusuf's ear, and the weight of him was heavy and intimate and good and Yusuf thought, _yes, yes this is what i've maybe been missing, this_

\---

_almost three years following that_

"--is called Arthur." Eames' voice dived into a throaty crackle on the r, pulling it out, and Yusuf could tell from that alone. 

"All right," Yusuf said, and, "goodbye," and hung up.

\---

_fifteen days into being somnesiac_

Eames yawned and Yusuf marvelled at how much it sounded like that time in the kitchen, whenever-it-was-ago. He could almost smell the sweet fritters in oil; but then again, that was how Eames smelled these days, of green-spice cardamom behind the creases of his ears, and a slight mothball camphor because he was still just wearing Yusuf's clothes. "You should get a bigger bed," Eames mumbled, and then turned a little, the bed creaking, to say, "--and don't tell me mummy bought this one so you've never thought of changing it."

"I bought this bed," Yusuf confirmed, shifting as Eames rolled back onto his side and cuddled back into his pillow, the movement dragging their linked hands further onto Eames' stomach and Yusuf's arm more snugly against Eames' body. "And most of the time I've no need for a bigger one. The cat doesn't take up much space."

"I do," Eames said. "I'm short but significant, you could say."

"Would anybody say that?" Yusuf wondered aloud, and Eames chortled, pushing his hips back so they were curved into steeper spoons. Yusuf went still for a moment before letting himself relax again. They'd been doing this most of the time Eames had been here, after the semi-seizure in the kitchen; it ostensibly began so that Yusuf could keep an eye on his charge, but then they'd given up on propriety (if, indeed, Eames ever possessed any to begin with) and began sleeping draped on each other, cuddled up, curled and sprawled and every other way to get comfortable that they could find. Most of the time, it was just that -- comfort, easy friendly warmth and the press of familiar flesh, companionship to help ease them into slumber. Most of the time.

This time, though.

Eames pulled their hands up higher on his front, his fingers opening and closing, and cocked one hip. "I know who I am, you know that," he said quietly. A kiskadee announced itself outside the window, startling Yusuf, making him snap back more brusquely than he intended, "Yes, you're self-aware, congratulations," before Eames snorted.

"That's not what I'm saying." Eames pushed a foot back, a rough patch at the heel barking against the inside of Yusuf's ankle. "I remember who I _am_. It's not as though I've completely lost the plot, Yusuf, I know me, I know you--"

"You know where you are and what day it is?"

"--I know what I'm doing." Eames turned his head, and there was his face, all straight-tipped nose soft with the oil of his warm sleepy skin, lips plump and pink, softly wet, falling open, eyes dark and watchful, calm, unworried. "It's hardly taking advantage."

Yusuf breathed in, and he breathed out. "I don't think anybody could possibly take advantage of you," he said, and Eames gave a bit of a chuckle until Yusuf continued, "...I don't think you'd ever let yourself admit to it, that anything's happened to you like that, nothing that you haven't been to bla--"

The phone rang.

\---

_the day of_

Arthur keeps ducking his head slightly, like if he can just catch a glimpse beneath Eames' chin, he'll be able to see the memory flooding back. It's not going to work like that. Eames has been remembering, and the fact that he knows who he is, that's a positive sign, one that Yusuf has nurtured for this fortnight-plus. But the rest of it will sift back like lumpy flour, some of it needing to be pushed through that sieve of drug-haze with the fingertips, a little extra pressure applied.

Yusuf's not one for applying pressure. He likes his life, comfortable. He likes the size of his bed.

"I can't -- _we_ can't thank you enough," Arthur starts, and Yusuf waves his hand.

"It's nothing, " he says, with a smile. "We're old friends, after all. I'd be happy to have Mr. Eames stay with me again."

"Next time let's do it without the damned Somnesia, eh, Yusuf?" Eames says, his fingers twirling patterns against the inside of Arthur's wrist, the light illuminating the blue of his grey eyes as he steps into the front doorway. "And this time I'll cook the breakfasts, and the teas, while I'm at it, and you can recite chemical formulas to me like sutras while I stand over the pots."

"Don't be bloody ridiculous, Eames," Yusuf says, as Eames links his fingers with Arthur's, already stepping down the two stairs from the front door into the beating early afternoon sun. Eames is saying something, lips curving around the words, but Yusuf shuts the door.

  
  



End file.
